Passengers regularly consume food and beverages while traveling on aircraft and other conveyances. Food and beverages may be supplied by a carrier or may be brought on board by passengers. Either way, passengers require a place to secure food and beverages to avoid the inconvenience of having to continuously hold these items.
With respect to passenger aircraft, tray tables can be utilized to secure food and beverages during flight. Tray tables typically include a tabletop configured to transition between a stowed position during taxi, take-off and landing, and a use position during flight, oftentimes changing tabletop orientation between the two positions. For example, tray tables may deploy from against the backside of a forward backrest. In another example, tray tables may deploy from alongside a passenger seat. While the former are typically utilized with economy and premium economy class passenger seats in second and subsequent rows, the latter are typically utilized in premium seating classes and the first row of each seating class.
While tabletops are well suited to support meal trays and food items, they are inadequate to properly secure beverage containers and impractical to deploy to support only beverage containers. As such, passenger seats are commonly equipped with dedicated cup holders located, for example, adjacent the passenger seat, deployable from within the backrest, within adjacent furniture and consoles, etc. Backrest-mounted cup holders are particularly disadvantageous in that they require a deployment mechanism, consume backrest space reserved for tray tables and other amenities, and must deploy out of the way of the use position of the tray table and without interfering with backrest recline function. Conventional seat-mounted cup holders may deploy, for example, from within an armrest. These types of cup holders are disadvantageous in that they require a deployment mechanism that typically positions the cup holder into the seat space and/or interfere with the use of the armrest. Deployment of a cup holder into the seat space further disadvantageously positions the cup holder in the way of seat ingress and egress, where such mechanisms are most likely to be damaged.
Accordingly, what is needed is a cup holder that can be located in a convenient and readily-accessible seat component out of the way and separate from a seat tray table, as well as a cup holder that does not require a deployment mechanism, does not interfere with or detract from seat component usage, facilitates rapid cleaning and replacement, and is robust to withstand prolonged use and repeated cycling of the seat component. Such a cup holder would be particularly well-suited for use with an economy class aircraft passenger seat.